Thanks John. Tim from GreenLeaf said that the Egg is so efficient that it doesn't burn enough fuel to really set wood chunks on fire.
I'm a bit confused by this statement & haven't had this discussion with Tim. Do you think he meant that if spread say 6 chunks evenly around your coals for a 4 hour cook that you could come back and find half of them intact? If so, I have found partially burnt chunks but only in areas the lump hadn't ignited yet. Or was he suggesting chips over chunks?
I'm curious to know how you like your small compared to your XL. Do you fire up the small if you're doing a couple of steaks? I'm really enjoying the XL, but find it very overbearing for small cooks.
I'd love to see your backyard some day.
I like both my Small and the XL but they behave quite differently. The XL was my first purchase as a demo egg at this year's Eggs By The Bay Eggfest. At that Eggfest one of the cooks brought his small Egg along and I showed it to my wife who said "It's so cute. Can we get one?" :-D From a practicality standpoint, the small fits our family size better (there's just 2 of us and no kids - unless you count our 4 legged kid/puppy). I thought for sure I'd do a lot more cooking on the small but I probably cook at least 50% of the time on the XL. I tend to cook way more food than we can eat and I share lots with family, friends, and co-workers. I've found myself with this "I have to fill it to get the most out of the load of lump" mentality lately and I need to break out of it as it's not cheap to keep giving food away. Oops, I got off topic. The Small uses a heck of a lot less lump, can adjust temps quicker (particularly downward), and is light enough to take with me to cook elsewhere. It cools down pretty fast (I've cooked a beer can chicken in it and had it cool enough to load into the car in a little over 1 hr). For smoking, the small can't cook nearly as long as the XL on a single load. I know there are some who have loaded it up enough to smoke a butt but I haven't been able to in 2 tries. However, I haven't tried loading it full with Wicked Good yet and think I could get it last long enough if I did. The grill is only 13" in diameter so there's some obvious limitations like no packer briskets or other large or long cuts of meat.
As to your question about firing up the small to grill a couple of steaks, yes, I have been doing that. Another alternative I have is to use the
lump reducing ring I have to corral the lump into a 14" diameter which is about the size of a medium Egg. Admittedly, I haven't tried it yet! I need to add that to my list of things to try out.
In regards to my backyard, the part that matters is in my avatar. Here's the large view of it:
The small Egg sits in my garage when it isn't in use since it only weighs 65 lbs and I'd hate to come home one day and find out someone hopped my fence and carried it off. My Imperial Kamado is missing from this pic but I haven't had the time to start restoring it yet. R2D2 sits inside unless we have need of a cooler. The rest of my backyard is mostly dirt/mud and in need of landscaping.
This is influencing our decision on how we'll be landscaping the yard:
Oops, off topic again! :roll:
